Elon Musk's social media network X has caused major backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to change pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several examples have emerged where the technology has been employed to virtually strip female subjects to render them in bikinis without consent, as well as to place them in inappropriate scenarios.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the firm that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, aside from an auto-reply message stating "legacy media lies".
A government representative stated that new laws is being introduced to prohibit nudification technology. Under a proposed law, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and heavy penalties".
"The platform has the ability to stop these types of abuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Regulator Position and Platform Functionality
The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people seeing illegal content on their platforms, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently examining X or Grok in regarding artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some paid-for functions—which answers X users' prompts when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also can alter an uploaded image through its AI image editing function.
Background of Controversy and Policy
The chatbot has been criticised for allowing users to generate images and videos with nudity and sexualised content, and it was in the past accused of generating sexually explicit material of celebrities.
"X has been enabling the generation and sharing of these pictures for a long time without taking any measures and we have not witnessed any challenge by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own acceptable use policy forbids "showing images of people in a pornographic way".
In a statement, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said platforms such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "minimize the risk" of users viewing unlawful content on their services and to take down it swiftly when they learn of it.
