Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they mention it in a post.
It is frequently used to give reactions or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they become aware of it.
