Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating 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 post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
