Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
