Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
