Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
