Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
