Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
