Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
