Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
