Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
