Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
