Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread outrage after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
