Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
