Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant outrage after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for allowing users to produce photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
