Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
