Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
