Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
