Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
