Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
