Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
