Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution 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 terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
