Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
