Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread anger after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
