Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
