Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a jail term and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
