Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
