Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
