Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
