Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting 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 terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
