Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
