Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
