Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
