Elon Musk's social media network X has caused significant outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by removing their garments.
Numerous instances have emerged where the system has been employed to remove clothing from women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company responsible for Grok, remained silent to questions, other than an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office official stated that new laws is being introduced 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 is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to offer commentary or more background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been condemned for permitting users to generate pictures and videos with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been permitting the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any steps and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or distribute private pictures or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images made with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
