Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
