Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked widespread backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
