Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification software. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a prison sentence and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was currently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they reference it in a post.
It is commonly used to give reactions or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to create pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in making sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
