Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
