Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their garments.
Numerous examples have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
