Elon Musk's online network X has caused widespread anger after people used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of women by removing their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the technology has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who supplied such tools would "be subject to a jail term and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost chatbot—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they reference it in a post.
It is often used to provide reactions or additional context to other users' comments, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been faulted for permitting users to produce pictures and videos with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been permitting the creation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service prohibits "portraying images of persons in a graphic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable measures" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it promptly when they learn of it.
