Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
