Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been used to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to produce pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of generating inappropriate content of celebrities.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
