Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
