Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
