Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
