Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the system has been used to virtually strip women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
