Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
