Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production 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 usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
