Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
