Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse 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 risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action 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 sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
