Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
