Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by removing their attire.
Multiple cases have been seen where the technology has been used to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
