Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
