Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
