Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
