Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying images of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
