Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
