Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
