Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
