Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
