Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after individuals used its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of women by stripping their garments.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution 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 "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
