I guess the difference is that it requires a certain amount of time, ability and skill to make creepy pictures using photoshop - which limits the number of people who will actually do that.

Photoshops also does not have a direct distribution channel built in, which means that if even if you had the wherewithal, knowledge, and nothing better to do, your creepy images would likely stay on your computer, and never see the light of day.

As I understand it, with Grok you simply give it a sexualised prompt and it does it for you in seconds, and immediately distributes the results to a potential audience of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people, where it will likely stay for a long period of time.

To my mind that's definitely rather different.

If you were to provide Photoshop as a Service on a sufficiently large scale, you would also be expected to take all reasonable measures to prevent it being used to disseminate CSAM and other abusive material.

So, no different to the standard that X should be held to.

And people do do this and have been making crazy and creepy pictures online since its inception. It's never been that much of an issue until now.

In UK law, it isn't.

The practical difference is simply that now it is happening far more frequently.