Elon Musk's social media platform X has provoked significant anger after people employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter images of females by stripping their attire.
Numerous instances have surfaced where the system has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to put them in sexually explicit scenarios.
Developer Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm behind Grok, offered no comment to inquiries, except for an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government official stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification tools. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who distributed such technology would "face a jail term and significant penalties".
"X or Grok has the ability to stop these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with impunity."
Regulator Position and Tool Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said tech firms must "consider the potential" of people accessing unlawful material on their networks, but did not confirm whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in concerning artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some additional functions—which reacts to X users' queries when they tag it in a tweet.
It is frequently used to provide commentary or further background to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can edit an uploaded image through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.
History of Criticism and Policy
The tool has been criticised for allowing users to produce images and clips with nudity and sexually suggestive content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of public figures.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.
XAI's own terms of service forbids "depicting images of persons in a pornographic manner".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or share private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this covered explicit AI images generated with AI.
It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable measures" to "lessen the danger" of users coming across unlawful content on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they learn of it.
