Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
