Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
