Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
