Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
