Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of people in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
