Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
