Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
