Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
