Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
