Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their services, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to generate photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying images of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
