Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
