Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to create images and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
