Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
