Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
