Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked widespread anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X 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 regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
