Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
