Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
