Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Numerous cases have emerged where the tool has been used to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, other than an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who provided such tools would "face a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a post.
It is frequently used to provide reactions or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate pictures and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier accused of creating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing images of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
