Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
