Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
