Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have surfaced where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.