Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
