Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
