Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"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 Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing 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 usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
