Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
