Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
