Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
