Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
