Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
