Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
