Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
