Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
