Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
