Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
