Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
