Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
