Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
