Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
