Elon Musk's online network X has sparked major backlash after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change images of women by taking off their attire.
Several instances have been seen where the technology has been employed to digitally undress women to show them in bikinis non-consensually, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, other than an standard message stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such tools would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of misuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "consider the risk" of people accessing unlawful material on their platforms, but did not confirm whether it was presently investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional features—which reacts to X users' requests when they tag it in a tweet.
It is often used to provide commentary or additional context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification tool.
Background of Criticism and Policy
The system has been faulted for permitting users to create photos and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making inappropriate content of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and sharing of these pictures for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "depicting likenesses of people in a graphic manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate deepfakes or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the risk" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they learn of it.
