Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government 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 prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
