Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
