Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
