Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
