Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
