Elon Musk's online platform X has caused significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to give commentary or additional background to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Criticism and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the danger" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
