Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
