Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
