Elon Musk's online network X has sparked significant anger after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by removing their garments.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or more context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
History of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to generate pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
