Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
