Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
