Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
