Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
