Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
