Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
