Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
