Elon Musk's social media network X has caused widespread anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate situations.
Developer Response and Legal Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such tools would "be subject to a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"The platform could prevent these forms of misuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a message.
It is often used to give commentary or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been condemned for allowing users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was previously alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these images for months without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "lessen the risk" of users viewing illegal content on their platforms and to remove it swiftly when they are notified of it.
