Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
