Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
