Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
