Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
