Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
