Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Multiple instances have emerged where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform could prevent these types of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
