Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
