Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose 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 viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
