Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
