Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
