Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
