Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
