Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
