Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
