Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
