Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
