Elon Musk's online network X has caused major anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by taking off their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they mention it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an posted image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "reduce the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they learn of it.
