Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major outrage after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
