Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide 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.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
