Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
