Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
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 currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
