Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in relation to AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
