Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
