Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
