Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
