Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
