Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
