Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
