Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
