Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant 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 regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
