Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
