Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
