Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
