Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
