Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
