Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by removing their attire.
Numerous cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Stance and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the potential" of people viewing illegal content on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of alter an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "portraying likenesses of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "reduce the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it promptly when they become aware of it.
