Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked major backlash after users employed its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to produce images and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
