Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major anger after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being brought forward to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a jail term and substantial fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a post.
It is often used to provide commentary or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any action and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "depicting images of people in a sexually explicit way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
