Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
