Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
