Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
