Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
