Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
