Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
