Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
