Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
