Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
