Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
