Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
