Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been condemned for enabling users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of individuals in a graphic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
