Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
