Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
