Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
