Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw image stripping tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
