Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
