Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
