Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures 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 terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
