Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
