Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
