Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
