Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
