Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok 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 Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
