Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
