Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
