Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
