Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Several examples have surfaced 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 inappropriate contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" 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 images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
