Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after individuals employed its AI chatbot Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.