Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
