Elon Musk's online network X has caused major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for allowing users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
