Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
