Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of women by stripping their attire.
Numerous examples have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful content on their services and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
