Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been condemned for allowing users to create images and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
