Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
