Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
