Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
