Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
