Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread outrage after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their clothing.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit contexts.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing function.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been criticised for permitting users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
