Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
