Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
