Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
