Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
