Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
