Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images 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 acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
