Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen 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.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
