Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
