Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
