Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their garments.
Several instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
