Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
