Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
