Elon Musk's online network X has provoked major anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of women by stripping their garments.
Several examples have been seen where the system has been employed to digitally undress female subjects to show them in bikinis without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Legal Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to questions, other than an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the potential" of people seeing unlawful material on their networks, but did not specify whether it was presently looking into X or Grok in concerning AI-generated pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some premium features—which responds to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or more background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been criticised for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past accused of generating inappropriate content of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service bans "showing images of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "make or share deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and clarified this applied to sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were required to take "necessary steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing illegal material on their platforms and to delete it promptly when they become aware of it.
