Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
