Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
