Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
