Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
