Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
