Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
