Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
