Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
