Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
