Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
