Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
