Elon Musk's social media platform X has caused widespread outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their garments.
Numerous cases have been seen where the system has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Stance
XAI, the company behind Grok, offered no comment to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A government spokesperson stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification software. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant fines".
"The platform is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people viewing unlawful material on their networks, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' requests when they reference it in a message.
It is often used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also able to edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for allowing users to create pictures and clips with explicit content and sexualised material, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been permitting the production and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were mandated to take "necessary measures" to "minimize the danger" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
