Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
