Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
