Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked widespread anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of women by taking off their clothing.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, except for an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' queries when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to modify an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce pictures and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was previously accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of people in a pornographic way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and stated this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
