Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing 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 terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
