Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
