Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
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 networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
