Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
