Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
