Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
