Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
