Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
