Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
