Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
