Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
