Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
