Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
