Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they become aware of it.
