Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
