Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
