Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by stripping their clothing.
Several instances have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to produce images and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not witnessed any action by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their services and to remove it promptly when they are notified of it.
