Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by stripping their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"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 tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been condemned for enabling users to produce images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal material on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
