Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
