Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
