Elon Musk's social media platform X has sparked major backlash after users used its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change photos of females by removing their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the tool has been used to remove clothing from women to show them in swimwear without consent, as well as to place them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Legal Position
XAI, the organization responsible for Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A Home Office representative stated that new laws is being introduced to ban nudification technology. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"X or Grok is capable of halting these types of abuse if they wanted to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the danger" of people viewing illegal content on their services, but did not specify whether it was at this time examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a post.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or more background to other users' comments, but people on X are also able to alter an posted image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The chatbot has been faulted for permitting users to generate photos and videos with nudity and sexualised material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in making graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the creation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy prohibits "portraying likenesses of persons in a sexually explicit fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "generate or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes generated with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "appropriate actions" to "minimize the risk" of users coming across illegal material on their services and to take down it swiftly when they are notified of it.
