Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
