Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
