Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
