Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
