Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked significant anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Several examples have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to generate photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
