Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant backlash after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of making graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
