Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
