Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
