Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused major backlash after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or circulate deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
