Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
