Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
