Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
