Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
