Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
