Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created 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 introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
