Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an standard message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering illegal material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
