Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
