Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
