Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
