Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
