Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
