Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is often used to give reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for enabling users to generate pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
