Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant backlash after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
