Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
