Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
