Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
