Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
