Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by removing their attire.
Multiple examples have been seen where the tool has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy 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 Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their networks, but did not specify whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or further context to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying likenesses of people in a graphic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they become aware of it.
