Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
