Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
