Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who supplied such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium functions—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce photos and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "appropriate steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
