Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
