Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory 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 representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
