Elon Musk's online network X has caused significant backlash after individuals employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free AI assistant—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' queries when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
History of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been condemned for permitting users to create pictures and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously accused of making graphic material of public figures.
"X has been enabling the production and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "depicting images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
