Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
