Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
