Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
