Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
