Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
