Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
