Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures 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 persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
