Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"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 usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
