Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures 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 way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
