Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse 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 technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
