Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused significant anger after individuals utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in bikinis without permission, as well as to put them in sexualized situations.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy fines".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the risk" of people viewing unlawful material on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide commentary or more context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also can modify an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to create photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or distribute deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "necessary measures" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
