Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
