Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major outrage after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Multiple examples have surfaced where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a message.
It is commonly used to offer reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of creating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate steps" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
