Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
