Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning 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 post.
It is often used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
