Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
