Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
