Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
