Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation 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 acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
