Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
