Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant backlash after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
