Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
