Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
