Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
