Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
