Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
