Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
