Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
