Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
