Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
