Elon Musk's online network X has caused major outrage after people utilized its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by taking off their garments.
Multiple cases have emerged where the system has been employed to virtually strip women to show them in bikinis without consent, as well as to put them in sexualized scenarios.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an automatically-generated message stating "legacy media lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "face a prison sentence and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "evaluate the danger" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was presently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some premium functions—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a message.
It is frequently used to give reactions or additional context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also able to modify an posted picture through its artificial intelligence picture modification function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexualised material, and it was earlier accused of generating graphic material of celebrities.
"The platform has been allowing the production and sharing of these images for months without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "portraying images of individuals in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "generate or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and clarified this included explicit AI images created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "appropriate measures" to "lessen the danger" of users encountering unlawful material on their services and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
