Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
