Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
