Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
