Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
