Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread outrage after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous examples have been seen where the technology has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create images and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
