Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
