Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
