Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
