Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy 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 Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
