Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
