Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major backlash after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
