Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
