Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
