Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
