Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
