Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
