Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen 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 situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
