Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
