A woman has told BBC that she felt “dehumanised and reduced into a sexual stereotype” after Elon Musk’s AI assistant, Grok, was used to digitally remove her clothing.
As per the details, BBC has reviewed several incidents on social media platform X where people instructed Grok to strip women in pictures, put them in bikinis without their permission, or generate sexualised scenarios.
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment beyond an automatically generated reply accusing that “legacy media lies”.
Freelance journalist and commentator Samantha Smith described her experience after a post featuring her image was altered. She said other users who had faced similar violations commented, and some even prompted Grok to produce more images of her.
“Women are not consenting to this,” she said. “While it wasn’t actually me in a state of undress, it looked like me, and it felt as violating as if someone had posted a nude or bikini picture of me.”
A Home office spokesperson said legislation is underway to ban “nudification” tools, warning that anyone supplying such technology would “face a prison sentence and substantial fines” under a new criminal offence.
Authorities said technology companies must “assess the risk” of users in the UK viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it is investigating X or Grok specifically for AI-generated images.
Grok, a free AI assistant with some paid premium features, responds to X users’ prompts when tagged in posts.
While commonly used to provide reactions or context, its AI image editing feature allows users to alter uploaded images.
The tool has faced criticism for permitting the creation of sexualised and nude content. It was previously accused of generating a sexually explicit clip of singer Taylor Swift.
Clare McGlynn, a law professor at Durham University, said X and Grok “could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to” and added the companies “appear to enjoy impunity”.
“The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action, and we have yet to see any regulatory challenge,” she said.
XAI’s own acceptable use policy forbids “depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”.
In a statement to BBC, the authorities reiterated that it was illegal to “create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material” and clarified that sexual deepfakes produced with AI fall under this definition.