Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
