Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
