🔗 Share this article

Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.

Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".

"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Functionality

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.

It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

History of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.

"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.