Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
