Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
