Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
