Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
