Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
