Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium functions—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
