Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
