Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
