Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
