Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
