Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
