Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
