Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
