Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
