Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
