Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
