Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
