Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
