Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
