Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
