Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
