Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after individuals utilized its AI chatbot Grok to change photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
