Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
