Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by taking off their garments.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
