Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
