Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to generate photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
