Elon Musk's online network X has sparked widespread backlash after individuals used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their clothing.
Several instances have emerged where the technology has been used to digitally undress female subjects to render them in swimwear non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit contexts.
Developer Response and Regulatory Stance
XAI, the firm responsible for Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "be subject to a jail term and significant fines".
"The platform has the ability to stop these forms of misuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was currently investigating X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to give commentary or additional background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been allowing the production and distribution of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a graphic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "generate or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "reduce the risk" of users coming across illegal content on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
