Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
