Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
