Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
