Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of women by taking off their garments.
Several cases have emerged where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to place them in sexualized contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Stance and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which answers X users' requests when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
History of Controversy and Rules
The tool has been faulted for enabling users to create pictures and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making graphic content of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and spread of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any action by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or circulate private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this covered explicit AI images made with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to take down it promptly when they become aware of it.
