Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple instances have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.