Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
