Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
