Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
