Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types 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 communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
