Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
