Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women 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 without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
