Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
