Elon Musk's online platform X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple cases have been seen where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and spread of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
