Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
