Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
