Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
