Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
