Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing images of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
