Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
