Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, 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 created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
