Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
