Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
