Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
