Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
