Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
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 picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
