Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Several examples have surfaced where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that legislation is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often 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 tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to create images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
