Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
