Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
