Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
