Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
