Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the technology has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they learn of it.
