Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked widespread anger after users utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, except for an automatically-generated response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people viewing illegal content on their services, 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 additional features—which reacts to X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded photo through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The system has been condemned for permitting users to create photos and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the production and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they are notified of it.
