Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
