Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
