Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
