Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to generate pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they are notified of it.
