Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
