Elon Musk's online network X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
