Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
