Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
