Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
