Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
