Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
