Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
