Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
