Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
