Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
