Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
