Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
