Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
