Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
