Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
