Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
