Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
