Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
