Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
