Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate images of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is often used to provide reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share deepfakes or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
