Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
