Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
