Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
