Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
