Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
