Elon Musk's online platform X has caused major anger after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter photos of women by removing their attire.
Multiple instances have been seen where the tool has been used to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to put them in sexually explicit situations.
Developer Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the firm behind Grok, did not respond to questions, aside from an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such tools would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "assess the danger" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free chatbot—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' queries when they mention it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to give commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for permitting users to create pictures and footage with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating graphic content of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a pornographic fashion".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "suitable actions" to "lessen the risk" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to take down it promptly when they are notified of it.
