Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
