Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate images of females by stripping their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the generation and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
