Elon Musk's online platform X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or additional background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they learn of it.
