Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
