Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
