Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
