Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from 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 criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
