Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
