Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
