Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
