Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
