Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
