Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
