Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
