Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
