Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' 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 chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
