Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked major outrage after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by stripping their clothing.
Multiple cases have been seen where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to insert them in sexualized situations.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the company that created Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated message stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that new laws is being proposed to outlaw nudification software. Under a upcoming law, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok could prevent these forms of abuse if they wanted to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Oversight Body Position and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said platforms must "assess the danger" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some additional functions—which responds to X users' prompts when they reference it in a tweet.
It is commonly used to provide reactions or further background to other posters' comments, but people on X are also able to edit an posted image through its AI image editing feature.
Background of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to create pictures and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of creating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"X has been allowing the creation and distribution of these images for months without taking any measures and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own usage rules bans "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit manner".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was unlawful to "create or share non-consensual intimate images or illegal content" and confirmed this included sexual deepfakes created with AI.
It said services such as X were obligated to take "suitable steps" to "reduce the risk" of users viewing unlawful material on their services and to take down it quickly when they are notified of it.
