Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images 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 likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
