Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
