Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
