Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
