Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
