Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
