Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been employed to digitally undress women to make them appear in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, other than an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to give commentary or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering illegal content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.
