Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
