Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
