Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
