Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
