Elon Musk's social media network X has provoked widespread anger after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to alter pictures of females by taking off their attire.
Several cases have been seen where the system has been employed to remove clothing from female subjects to render them in swimwear without consent, as well as to insert them in sexually explicit situations.
Company Response and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to inquiries, aside from an standard response stating "traditional news outlets lies".
A government representative stated that legislation is being introduced to outlaw nudification tools. Under a upcoming criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "receive a prison sentence and substantial penalties".
"The platform is capable of halting these forms of abuse if they chose to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "operate with a lack of consequences."
Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities
The communications watchdog Ofcom said platforms must "assess the potential" of people viewing unlawful material on their services, but did not specify whether it was presently examining X or Grok in relation to artificial intelligence pictures.
Grok is a free artificial intelligence—with some additional features—which responds to X users' requests when they tag it in a message.
It is frequently used to offer reactions or more background to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted picture through its AI image editing tool.
Background of Criticism and Rules
The tool has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive material, and it was in the past alleged to have been involved in generating sexually explicit content of public figures.
"The platform has been permitting the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any action and we have yet to see any action by oversight bodies," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules prohibits "showing likenesses of people in a pornographic fashion".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included sexual deepfakes made with AI.
It said services such as X were mandated to take "necessary actions" to "reduce the danger" of users encountering unlawful content on their platforms and to delete it quickly when they are notified of it.
