Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, 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 chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
