Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.
Several cases have surfaced where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to inquiries, other than an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such technology would "receive a jail term and significant fines".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some paid-for features—which responds to X users' prompts when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded photo through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The system has been faulted for enabling users to create images and videos with nudity and sexually suggestive 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 action and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it quickly when they learn of it.
