Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have emerged where the system has been used to digitally undress women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they learn of it.
