Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
