Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
