Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
