Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
