Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
