Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after people utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
