Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
