Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.