Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
