Elon Musk's online network X has provoked significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted photo through its AI image editing function.
History of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for enabling users to create images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share private pictures or illegal content" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
