Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
