Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
