Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they become aware of it.
