Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
