Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
