Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
