Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
