Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
