Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
