Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
