Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
