Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
