Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
