Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
