Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.
