Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
