Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests 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 capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
