Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
