Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
