Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
