Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
