Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
