Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
