Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
