Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag 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 edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
