Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
