Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
