Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
