Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
