Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
