Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by removing their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to offer reactions or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the creation and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
