Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant anger after users used its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
