The social media network X has sparked major anger after people employed its AI chatbot Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
