Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
