Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
