Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
