Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
