Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
