Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
