Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and spread of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
