Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
