Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
