Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
