Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
