Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
