Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
