Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
