Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
